


starfuckers, inc.

by noziro



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Codependency, Drinking, I Tried, Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Lots of Angst, M/M, Mental Instability, References to Addiction, References to Depression, So is Lance tbh, Substance Abuse, Work In Progress, hints of sheith, honestly everyone is, im bad at titles, klance, klance is endgame tho - Freeform, lmao @ my summary, my bad - Freeform, some gay shit, sorry i dont know what this is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 11:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13386741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noziro/pseuds/noziro
Summary: College sucks, and so does Keith.





	starfuckers, inc.

**Author's Note:**

> what up im 20 and i never fucking learned how to write

Keith took a deep breath, running his hand through his hair as he braced himself on the bathroom sink. The muted thumping of the music coming through the door was doing nothing for his sensory overload, which was heightened by the mix of drugs and alcohol in his system.

_‘Come to the party, Keith’_

_‘It’ll be fun, Keith’_

_‘When was the last time you hung out with anyone besides me, Keith?’_

Shiro’s words from earlier that evening were echoing in his head, causing Keith’s breathing to quicken along with his heartrate.

_Just breathe, Keith, you got this. You used to do this every damn night when you were 17, you can pull it together now._

Hanging his head between his arms, still craned over the bathroom sink, Keith focused on breathing and calming himself down.

Now, Keith was no stranger to parties and substance abuse. Or to his own mental fuckery. But the past summer, he spent holed up in Shiro’s and his apartment, getting super fucked up by himself while Shiro worked nearly every day.

Long story short, Keith’s summer was absolute hell and he reached a new low in terms of his own mental state. Which is part of why Shiro forced him to come to this party, hoping that a little social interaction on a larger scale would help bring Keith out of the rut he’d been in for the past 3 months.

It was September, which meant Keith had started back for his second year of college. Surprisingly, he was attending most of his classes, unlike last year, and he was slowly starting to come back to life in front of Shiro’s eyes.

So naturally, Shiro figured he could push Keith’s comfort zone just that little bit and get him to come to this stupid fucking party.

Suddenly, a knock on the bathroom door interrupted Keith’s mental tirade, as he jolted his head up and stared at the bathroom door in the reflection of the mirror.

“Keith? You okay?” Shiro’s voice floated through the door, gentle and concerned.

Sighing, Keith ran one last hand through his hair before pushing himself away from the sink and turned to open the door.

“I’m fine, Shiro.”

The older male stared at him, clearly conducting a mental scan of Keith’s current state.

“You sure?”

Keith’s only response was to roll his eyes as he made his way back through the house party, finding himself on the back patio and bumming a cigarette from some stoner with a yellow bandana tied across his forehead.

Sitting himself down in the grass, he joined the semi-circle of stoners who had congregated in the backyard.

“The name’s Hunk. I think I’ve seen you around campus, yeah?”

“I’m Keith.”

Clearly stumped by his blunt response, Hunk struggled to keep the conversation going.

“So how do you know Allura?”

“Oh, uh, my roommate, Shiro – “

“Ohhhh Shiro, yeah! He’s cool. You live with him?” There was a moment where the gears seemed to be turning in Hunk’s brain, albeit slowly as he was clearly struggling to stay focused. “Wait – that makes you _Shiro’s Keith?!_ ”

Unsure of whether that was a question or a statement, Keith opted to slightly nod and avert his eyes.

Before Hunk managed to say something else on the matter, a lanky teenager came running towards the group with a rather heated Allura following not too far behind.

“Lance! What have I told you about smoking inside!”

“Hunk, buddy! What’s up!” Lance called out as he defensively threw his body behind the larger teen, effectively using Hunk’s body as a buffer between him and Allura.

“Lance.” Allura puffed out, coming to a stand still in front of the curious stoner circle.

“Yes, m’lady?”

Lance looked up at Allura, clearly trying to appear innocent and charming all in one look, which resulted in Allura simply staring him down with one eyebrow arched. A very tense silence followed, broken only by Coran’s distant yelling from inside the house.

Shifting her eyes to the side, Allura clearly was torn between going to see what the hell was going on in her house and dealing with the Lance situation.

A few more silent, tense moments passed before Coran’s yelling turned into downright shrieking.

Allura let out a quick sigh, “I’m not done with you, you little shit.”

And with that, Allura turned on her heel and all but ran back into her house.

With her safely gone, Lance let his body fall backwards onto the grass, letting out the breath he had been holding.

“Geez, I thought for sure she was gonna kill me this time.”

“She really should have, Lance. You’ve gotta stop messing with her, one of these days, you won’t be allowed at these parties anymore.”

“Psssht, Allura could never ban me, she loves me too much.”

“Yeah, okay, buddy.” Hunk shook his head, chuckling a little.

Keith finished smoking his cigarette with one last drag before dropping the butt into an empty beer bottle that was being used for roaches.

This Lance guy was giving Keith a headache, and he didn’t particularly feel like listening to his self-indulgent whining at the moment.

Just as Keith made to stand up, Lance sat up from his position behind Hunk and locked eyes with Keith, his blue eyes widening as he registered the mullet and violet eyes gazing back at him. Somehow, Lance failed to see said violet eyes narrow in irritation as Lance opened his mouth,

“Hey! You’re Keith, yeah? You’re in my math class!”

The faintest hint of recognition flickered in Keith’s brain – this was the guy who was always talking loudly during the lesson and then asked the professor to go over shit he just taught all because this airhead wasn’t paying attention.

“Sure.” Keith said from his standing position before smoothly turning around and walking away from Lance and anything else that might come out of that guys mouth.

Lance simply stared, perplexed by Keith’s coldness.

“What was that all about?” Lance asked Hunk.

“Dunno. He was like that earlier too when I tried talking to him.”

Lance continued staring off in the direction Keith walked away in, not even noticing the joint that was being waved in front of his face.

* * *

Shiro sighed. Despite his best efforts to keep tabs on Keith, the raven haired boy seemed to give him the slip every chance he got.

He was lucky enough to glimpse him disappearing into the bathroom and was able to check on him after giving him a few minutes alone, but that was the last Shiro saw of Keith.

And that was almost an hour ago.

Shiro knew that bringing Keith here might be a bad idea, if not for any other reason then Keith’s increasing substance abuse issues that surfaced the past few months, and he was feeling entirely responsible for the bad time that Keith was clearly having if his bathroom meltdown was anything to go by.

Shiro had circled the entirety of Allura’s house almost 3 times now with no sign of the teen, and naturally Keith wasn’t answering his texts either.

Resigning himself to once again give the entire house and yard a once-over, Shiro began his route and started with the living room.

In his absence from his last sweep of the house, the young adults in the living room had taken it upon themselves to start playing a form of what looked like beer pong, only instead of beer, it was cups full of straight vodka.

Shaking his head and making to go towards the kitchen, Shiro was stopped in his tracks when the living room erupted into a chant of ‘chug! chug!’.

Turning to see who was falling victim to chugging back that ridiculous amount of vodka, Shiro’s eyes landed on a certain raven-haired boy tipping back his head with a red-solo cup obscuring most of his features.

Not all that surprised, if anything, possibly a little disappointed, Shiro let out a long exhale and began cutting his way through the crowd to get to Keith who was now wiping the back of his mouth with his gloved hand, bracing himself on the edge of the table as he crushed the cup in his hand and managed a small smirk to the cheers of the crowd.

As Shiro got within range, he came up behind Keith and gently grabbed his arm, causing Keith to turn his head and look up at the taller man.

“Oh, heeeeey Shiro! You wanna play?” Keith loudly sang out, clearly reaching the level of fucked that caused Keith to become the complete opposite of his sober self.

“No, no, I think I’m okay. I also think that _you’ve_ had enough, Keith. C’mon,” Shiro said, grabbing onto Keith’s hand and trying to tug him away from the game.

“But the rounds not over! I haven’t won yet!”

Shiro glanced down at the array of crushed red solo cups littered at Keith’s feet.

“By the looks of it, Keith, you’re not going to be the one winning tonight. Let’s go outside, get you some air.”

Huffing out an indignant sigh, Keith reluctantly let himself be pulled along behind Shiro, following the path that was cleared with his larger body.

Shiro brought him out on the balcony, overlooking the backyard and went to sit down on the porch swing Allura had hung out here.

Upon sitting down, Shiro found himself immediately covered with Keith’s body as the younger male dropped his entire body weight on Shiro’s lap, straddling the man and burying his face in Shiro’s neck.

Laughing, Shiro tried to push Keith into the empty space beside him but Keith had let his body go dead-weight, making Shiro’s intoxicated efforts useless.

“You having fun?”

The only response Shiro got was the slight movement of Keith’s head, nodding against his shoulder.

“Was that a yes?”

It was silent for a few moments, before very faintly, Keith sighed out a, “yeah.”

The two men sat there in silence, enjoying each other’s company while the cool night air swarmed around them.

A few minutes later, Shiro broke the silence.

“Hey, you’re not gonna throw up on me like last time, are you?”

Keith just started laughing, his breath tickling Shiro’s neck before he slowly pushed himself upwards into a sitting position.

“I might.”

Shiro’s eyes widened, causing Keith to only laugh harder before Shiro stood up, opting to carry Keith reverse-piggyback style and returning inside the house to find the bathroom.

The main bathroom was in use, so Shiro decided to go upstairs and use Allura’s en-suite bathroom, which was technically in violation of Allura’s party rules.

Easing Keith down in front of the toilet, Shiro lifted the toilet seat and positioned himself behind Keith to make sure he didn’t just lie down and puke.

Keith let his whole upper body slant forward against the toilet, and Shiro quickly grabbed Keith’s wrist and took the hair elastic from around it. Proceeding to fashion Keith’s hair into some form of a half-pony tail, he was successful in getting the hair out of his face and ultimately, out of the toilet bowl.

“Do you want any water?” Shiro gently asked, while lightly rubbing Keith’s back in small circles.

Keith merely grumbled in response.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Shiro stood up, and moved Keith to sit between the bathtub and the side of the toilet so that he wouldn’t fall backwards in his absence.

“I’ll be right back, please try not to die before I’m back.”

Keith simply offered a weak thumbs-up, and with that, Shiro disappeared back into the party.

* * *

 “Lance! Lance! Lance!”

Lance downed the last of the weird mix of liquors from his cup, grimacing as he tried to swallow down the fiery concoction of miscellaneous alcohol.

Blinking his watery eyes, he managed to give the crowd a thumbs-up and proceeded to stumble out of the room and away from the all the noise towards the bathroom.

Upon trying the bathroom handle, he discovered it was locked. Knocking on the door and calling out, “is anyone in there” a couple times warranted no reply, and upon pressing his ear up to the door he was met with the sounds of a couple obviously getting a little risqué in Allura’s tiny powder room.

“C’mon guys, I need in!! I may or may not be about to puke my guts out, pleeeease!” Lance desperately whined, smushing his face into the bathroom door and proceeding to slide down to the floor.

“Oh no – up you go buddy, you’re not allowed to puke in Allura’s hallway.” Hunk promptly found his best friend and heaved him up, draping Lance’s arm around his broad shoulders.

“Ugh…. Hunk, too much… movement… Not so… fast…” Lance weakly mumbled out, closing his eyes as his friend proceeded to drag him off who the hell knows where.

Hunk stopped and thought for a minute. He could bring Lance outside and let him puke out there, but last time Lance did that Allura had one of the biggest meltdowns of the century because of the “flowerbeds” and “little animals live there!”. Maybe if he could get Lance off Allura’s property and to the neighbourhood park down the block?

Hunk’s potential plan was met with Lance dry heaving in his arms, which warranted Hunk to immediately force Lance to stand up straight.

“Oh no you don’t. You’re not allowed to puke yet, you got it?”

Lance looked like he was about to cry but managed a weak nod while obviously swallowing back some amount of bile.

_‘Okay, so the park’s too far away. New plan. Allura has an upstairs bathroom, right? Just get Lance up the stairs and into the bathroom. That’s totally do-able. You got this, Hunk.’_

After giving himself a little pep-talk, Hunk proceeded to drag Lance up the stairs – or rather, tried to.

Shiro was on his way downstairs, and nearly collided with the two in his haste to get Keith a glass of water.

“Oh, sorry!” Shiro exclaimed as he reached out and grabbed onto Lance to steady him before he fell backwards down the stairs. “Damn, is he doing okay?”

Shiro looked at Hunk, who just shrugged.

“He’ll be fine, he does this nearly every weekend.”

“Can’t hold his liquor, huh?” Shiro chuckled.

“Oh, no, he can. He just chooses not to and proceeds to drink unholy amounts until he hits this point.”

“I am a god, Hunk!” Lance weakly proclaimed, trying to be proud of his consumption.

“Uh-huh, sure, buddy.” Hunk said as he shuffled out of Shiro’s way, allowing the older male to pass them with a chuckle and a little wave over his shoulder before disappearing into the kitchen.

“Okay, we’re almost there, Lance. You’ve made it this far without puking, please don’t start now.”

Finally reaching the door to Allura’s bedroom, Hunk pushed it open and scanned the room for the adjoining bathroom.

Shuffling across the bedroom to the bathroom door, Hunk all but threw the door open to find what looked to be a corpse sandwiched between the bathtub and the toilet.

“Uh….”

Unceremoniously dropping Lance next to the toilet, Hunk knelt down to inspect the other guy’s face and check for life as he recognized the boy from earlier.

“Keith? You alive?”

Hunk tried gently nudging the raven-haired boy’s side, eliciting a groan that faintly sounded like a ‘fuck off’.

Accepting this response, Hunk turned to look at his best friend.

Lance had all but sprawled across the entirety of the bathroom floor, his head face down on the bathmat with one his arms haphazardly draped on the toilet bowl.

Shaking his head, he moved Lance’s long legs away from the door and proceeded to try and sit him up against the bathroom cabinet, only for Lance to slide down to the floor once more.

“Okay, I know you have to puke, and I’m not going to let you die because you chose to lie down and eat your own vomit. C’mon, get up.”

“’m fiiiiiiiiiine,” Lance whined, “jus’ lemme lie down, ‘s all I need I swear.”

Hunk refused this explanation, and hoisting his best friend up into a sitting position, he proceeded to hold his torso up with his head positioned directly over the toilet bowl, which Keith’s head was still resting on.

This movement, apparently, did not agree with Lance.

Just as Shiro appeared in the doorway holding a glass of water, Lance began to dry heave again. Keith, clearly disgusted, barely managed to lift his head out of the way in time to watch Lance retch the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl, mere inches from Keith’s face.

Shiro stood in the door, his expression mirroring Hunk’s slack jawed look while Lance continued to puke into the toilet, much to Keith’s horror.

Unfortunately, this caused Keith’s own vomit to begin to work its way up, and knowing Keith would sooner puke all over the bathroom floor rather than into the same toilet as another person, Shiro swiftly stepped over Hunk and Lance and forced Keith towards the toilet.

It was in this position – Hunk propping up Lance as he heaved into the toilet while Shiro forced Keith’s head mere millimetres from Lance’s while he, too, was throwing up, that Allura walked into her bedroom and found the four men.  The situation might have been funny, if not for the murderous look in Allura’s eyes.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

Shiro and Hunk, as the only ones capable of responding right now, whipped their heads towards the sound of her voice, only to simultaneously turn red in shame as they tried not to meet her eyes.

“The downstairs bathroom was occupied, and… well, clearly, they had to puke.” Hunk sheepishly explained.

“My bathroom is off limits! For this very reason! The last thing I want is some destitute sloppy boys vomiting who knows what into my toilet! I shouldn’t have to clean puke out of my _personal_ bathroom!”

Allura’s shrieking seemed to put an end to Lance’s stream of vomit, to which he weakly interjected,

“Well, _maybe_ if you would enforce your ‘no sex in the bathroom’ rule as strongly as you enforce this, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

Allura seemed ready to yell back a retort, but stopped short.

“Wait – what do you mean?”

“What do you think he means? Obviously people were getting it on in the downstairs bathroom, which meant Lance and Keith here had to seek solace elsewhere.” Hunk kindly pointed out.

Lance had started his second round of puking at this point, while Keith seemed to be done as he let his head fall back onto Shiro’s lap, who was now seated on the edge of the tub.

“Whatever. But YOU are responsible for cleaning the bathroom when this is done. And I mean CLEAN. It better smell like a cleaning product orgy in here when you’re done with it.”

With that, Allura turned on her heel, slamming the door shut behind her.

“Hey, Hunk, right? Could you pass me the glass of water that’s on the counter?” Shiro asked, amazed that Lance was still puking after all this time.

Hunk obediently passed the glass to Shiro, who in turn tried to nudge Keith into drinking from it.

Keith grumbled at first, but upon opening his eyes and seeing the glass his expression brightened, only before he scowled again.

“That’s water, right? It’s not another glass of vodka?” Keith skeptically asked, eyeing the glass suspiciously.

Shiro chuckled, “Yes, it’s water. I wouldn’t do that to you, you know that.”

Keith rolled his eyes before sitting up properly to drink some water.

With one last disgustingly violent heave, Lance finished his own puking and clumsily reached for the toilet handle, attempting to flush away his sins – and Keith’s.

Keith stared suspiciously at Lance, who know had adopted Keith’s earlier position of resting his head on the side of the toilet bowl.

Feeling the staring, Lance opened his eyes and looked at Keith.

“What?”

Keith, disgust evident on his face, said nothing.

Hunk simply chuckled, “Lance, c’mon, by now you’ve got to know that not everyone is used to watching a man puke up twice his entire body weight and live to tell the tale.”

Lance tried to shake his head, but ended up closing his eyes and falling still against the toilet again.

“He does this a lot then?” Shiro asked.

“Every damn weekend. And I’m always the one who has to look after him.”

Shiro laughed a little, glancing down at Keith who was clutching the glass of water to his chest but had let his head fall back into Shiro’s lap again, eyes closed against the fluorescent bathroom lights.

“Yeah, I hear ya.”

“Keith too, huh?”

“Only ‘every damn weekend’. Usually not at a party though – at least, lately.”

With both Keith and Lance exhausted from their puke-escapades, Shiro and Hunk were free to talk openly as both boys were clearly too far gone to understand conversation.

“…He’s not very social, is he?”

Shiro was silent, considering his answer.

“I… I don’t know. It’s not that simple, really. I mean, back in high school, he was very similar to Lance – the ‘Life of the Party’, always going out, always getting fucked up, constantly surrounded by people. But… This past year has been tough for him, especially these past few months, he hasn’t gotten out much. I think he’s forgotten how to interact with people, which is why I kinda made him come tonight. Which, in hindsight, was probably too much too soon for him.”

Hunk nodded in understanding, unsure of what to say to that.

A comfortable silence ensued, in which Shiro idly played with Keith’s hair in his lap and Hunk soothingly rubbed Lance’s hunched over back.

About 15 minutes later, while Keith had clearly fallen asleep, Lance jolted upright, surprising both Shiro and Hunk.

Hunk just raised his eyebrows, “You good, dude?”

Lance, blinking his bright blue eyes as they adjusted to the light, nodded his head.

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“Want some water?”

“That’d be good, yeah.”

Shiro glanced down to the cup clutched in Keith’s hands. It was still half full.

Gently prying Keith’s grip from the cup, Shiro offered the cup to Lance who took it gratefully and began chugging it back.

“Hey! That’s _my_ water!” Keith sleepily protested as he began to try to push himself into a standing position, Shiro shadowing his movements and holding him steady.

“We’ll get you more water, Keith, it’s okay.”

Keith just stared down at Lance, annoyance riddled through his expression, before nodding to Shiro.

Taking the opportunity, Shiro proceeded to usher Keith out of the bathroom and down the stairs.

“You have everything? Your phone, keys, wallet?” Shiro asked, but proceeded to check Keith’s pockets himself just to make sure.

Being satisfied with his search, he did the same for himself before he proceeded to call a cab, knowing that Keith would not be up for the 45 minute walk back to their apartment.

The first thing Keith did upon arriving home was brush his teeth, and then he violently flopped down onto the couch. Shiro just shook his head, and went to remove Keith’s jacket as well as his shoes and jeans, before carrying the over-intoxicated male to his own bed.

After carefully tucking Keith into bed and making sure there was a glass of water next to his bed, Shiro went into his own room and unceremoniously stripped down to his boxers and collapsed onto his bed, much in the same manner Keith had thrown himself onto the couch in.

It was well past 2 o’clock in the afternoon before either men showed signs of life the next day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> leave a review and lemme know if you think i should continue this shit storm lmao thnx


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